Aug. 28--Fourteen years ago, a lifetime in car years, the brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee was all rugged vigor.

Its blue-green body sparkled, and its green leather-look seats were jaunty with maroon piping.

It was an Orvis edition, a name that promised wilderness adventure. Fly-fishing, mountain camping, bear encounters -- anything was possible with this bad-boy SUV.

When it was first titled at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Vienna, it had 43 miles on its odometer.

Today it bakes in the August sun at M&M Auto Parts in Stafford County, its odometer frozen forever at 217,351.

Nearby on the salvage-yard lot, other SUVs and vans have the words "CARS Clunkers" scrawled on their windshields. On the Jeep Cherokee's windshield, someone has simply written "D.O.A."

It arrived at its final resting place with its wooden massaging-bead seat covers in place, its Yankee Candle air fresheners still exuding a "clean cotton" scent.

On the floor under the glove compartment are a crushed Diet Pepsi can, the vivid remnant of an orange cracker, a metal fork, a fossilized french fry.

If this SUV ever went fly-fishing or bear-encountering, those adventures left no trace.

Its official biography doesn't make mention of adventure. It gives only facts of ownership, maintenance, inspections, mileage and titling.

Owner No. 1 drove it off the lot in Fairfax in July 1995 and kept it titled and emissions-inspected in Vienna.

At 80,040 miles, it got a full work-up, with all systems scrutinized. It got a new water pump and, later, a refrigerant recharge.

It changed ownership in 2001, and again in '02.

By Owner No. 3 it was pushing 90,000 miles. That's when its manufacturer, Chrysler, issued a safety recall for its automatic shifter. No one bothered to fix it.

Owner No. 3 kept the Jeep registered and titled in Washington and drove it sparingly. Fly-fishing seems unlikely in this case.

Then came the auto auction and a transfer to its fourth and final owner, who took possession two days before Christmas 2004 and titled the car in King William County.

Between January of '05 and this month, Owner No. 4 took this Jeep from just under 111,000 miles to nearly 220,000.

It shows.

A headlight tilts slightly, a rear bumper sports a scrape of white paint, a door is dinged. Its antenna is broken off at the hood.

Inside, seats and door handles are filmed with gray, and floor mats are crusted with dirt and rocks.

It's a clunker by any definition, including the one that made it more valuable off the road than on earlier this month.

Now it sits in the sun, in front of M&M's blue-and-yellow OverBuilt High-speed Crusher Model 10 HS.

In coming days, it will be methodically stripped of its reusable parts. Eventually it will be flattened by that crusher, packaged with other flattened cars and sent away for even further recycling -- till it's nothing more than steel, aluminum and plastics.

Did it ever get to the rushing mountain stream, to the pines and the bears and the trout? Or did it spend all its days on Interstate 95 with so many other SUVs?

Someone out there knows. But the Jeep's not telling.

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Copyright (c) 2009, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.

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